


miles apart, so close together

by serendipitea



Series: not chance, but destiny [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Lost Love, Zutara Week, Zutara Week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25521817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipitea/pseuds/serendipitea
Summary: Zuko and Katara meet, ten years after the war. He has resolved to his fate, she still wants to have hope.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: not chance, but destiny [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848982
Comments: 51
Kudos: 171





	miles apart, so close together

Zuko follows Katara out to the balcony, away from the loud chatter of the banquet that celebrates ten years of the end of the war. Here, there is a silence and stillness that he hasn’t felt for years. The kind that feels like making dinner together, or watching over her as he rekindles their campfire or journeys through the sky after the hardest decision she ever had to make.

He slows to a stop beside her at the railing, watching the water in the turtleduck pond shine below them.

He shouldn’t say anything. He should just savour the privilege of standing by her side, even just for a few moments. He should appreciate every second of this, because he never knows when he’ll see her again. He should close his eyes and pretend he is holding her hand tight enough that she will never pull away. He should make this easy for both of them.

But Zuko has always been bad at making decisions.

He speaks.

“I missed you.”

Katara sucks in a breath. But she gives no other reaction. She can’t move, all the energy has drained out of her and there is an external force pinning her into place. It hurts, even after so long, to see him as something other than a vision in her saddest dreams. When he is real he puts her memory to shame because his voice is raspy like her mind can never mimic. Agonizing is the feeling to know what you let go and have the thought of it plague you like a sickness humanity has never encountered. In reality, right beside her, he is so much more heartbreaking.

“I missed you,” she admits.

He gives in. He turns and watches her, noting how much she’s grown in their years apart. She is more beautiful than Zuko ever remembered.

“You look happy…” it comes out almost like a question.

Her eyes meet his slowly when she finally uses all her strength to look at him.

She isn’t sure what to say. For all the biting remarks and fights they have shared with each other and all the consoling and crying they have done together, she is left speechless now. Not a word comes to her lips.

 _Happy_. Who wouldn’t be happy when there isn’t a war raging on, when their life isn’t under threat every day, when she can sleep soundly and not worry about making quick escapes in the dead of night?

No— that’s just peace.

Yes, there has been peace for ten years. She has seen it with the rebuilding of the Southern Water Tribe, with the resurgence of an appreciation of Air Nomad culture, with the relations between the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation finally being stable. Peace has spread the globe.

But happiness is not peace.

Katara is not sure if she has felt true happiness in a very long time.

When blue and gold irises meet, sad and tired from the world that had matured them too soon, she wants so badly to tell him the truth. She isn’t happy. She is just carrying on, day by day. She is playing her part: good girlfriend, good wife, and eventually good mother she assumes.

It was easy at first, to distract herself from her wild imagination and her unsatisfied heart that begged for her to change her mind. She could push away her stray thoughts and convince herself to be thankful of a simple life— a _peaceful_ life. As the years progressed, the facade she put on became a veil that suffocated her. Inside, she began to bubble with bitterness and resentment. Soon enough, everything was flawed in her eyes. The life she stole was someone else’s destiny. And the realization of it all made her fall apart. But it was too late.

“Yes.”

Her eyes drop. He looks away, sighing. She hates lying to him, but she hopes she has gotten better at it.

“Are you happy, Zuko?”

His head whips to hers so fast it makes her look up. He searches her eyes, like he is asking if he should lie too.

Zuko’s eyes sting and he has to pull his eyelids shut to stop from making this any harder, for the both of them. He swallows, then speaks.

“Yes.”

They turn away, back to the grand expanse of garden below them.

After moments that feel like hours, Katara speaks.

“How?”

He looks to her, face blank and almost afraid.

“How can you see me live out my life with someone else?”

He swallows. This isn’t a question that he can douse with the same lies they always tell each other when they meet. No, this question holds fire that is too strong for Zuko to handle. This conversation is toeing a line, the point of no return. He isn’t sure he can cross it without being in agony for the rest of his life, more so than he is in now.

She continues.

“Because I can’t. It’s why I try never to come.”

 _Then why did you come tonight?_ He wants to spit back. But he can’t. Because even if she intends to hurt him with the truth, he can’t let her. He _really_ can’t let her. No matter the itch in his chest that begs him to say something, at least just to keep her talking— to keep her beside him.

It is like tasting forbidden fruit, but not enough to be banished. He still has a chance to go back, but his heart doesn’t want to. He misses her voice: tranquil like water in the turtleduck pond, even when she is furious. Her face is tight and even then she is more beautiful than he could ever put into words. If he closes his eyes, her sharp tone is like the one he remembers from ten years ago. And the nostalgia of it all makes him want to give in.

No.

He can’t.

Despite all of that, he can’t let her traverse into arguing over missed chances at different lives.

He _can’t._

“Speak,” she commands.

He shakes his head, “Katara, we should head back.”

“No. I need you to say how you feel. I need to hear it.”

His eyes are begging her.

“You know I can’t. It’s better for everyone if this doesn’t happen. I want to be here for you, but I can’t. I want to tell you the truth, but I can’t. I can’t do that to you.”

“Don’t—”

“What—”

“Don’t threaten me with perfection,” she chokes out, a lump forming in her throat.

He shakes his head, confusion apparent.

“You’ve always done this.”

“Katara, I don’t understand.”

She bites out, “Always.”

Zuko reaches for her hand and she pulls it away.

“When you said you would help me get closure and you stood by me the whole time. When you told me whatever decision I made was the right one, on the way back. When you promised me everything would be alright before the last battle. When you said you would do it again, even if it meant throwing your life away, you’d do it for me. When you said you’d never make me choose, that you already received far more than you deserved when it came to your time with me. When you never wrote unless I wrote first. When you kept your distance and you watched and you never said you were angry and you never yelled and you never told me how much it hurt you because you knew it would break me and — and you were perfect.”

Her skin stings as the tears stream down.

“You were always perfect.”

Zuko can only stare. There isn’t any air left in his lungs to breathe. He thinks his vision may go black and he’ll wake up in his bed the next day, broken over a nightmare.

 _Perfect._ He wouldn’t dare to think of himself as good enough, let alone _perfect_ , for her. __

No. _Katara_ is perfect. She is forgiving with the right limitations that will guard her. She is sweet in the way one can only imagine a true friend. She is persistent and controlled, the personification of the sea under the moon’s command. She is strong, stronger than anyone else he knows in every single way. She is comforting like the arms of family after a long tiresome day. She is compassionate like a star crossed lover they write plays about. And more. So much more that his mind can barely conjure the ability to list all her excellence.

Though, he will never know the extent of any of these remarkable qualities. He could never be that lucky.

“And now you stand there. You don’t speak. Because you know if you do you’ll tell me to stay and I will. I’ll drop everything and I’ll stay if you just ask,” she clenches her teeth, tears still blurring her vision, “But you’ll never ask.”

He stays silent.

“You don’t ask because you know how it would hurt Aang. You know it would break him. You know it would ruin your friendship with Sokka. You know it would make Toph and Suki see you differently. You know Iroh would be disappointed that you broke a home. You know your mother would say you were selfish like your father. You know your sister would say you were too weak to let go. You know your court would despise the water tribe peasant and try to erase her before she became a problem. You know the world would hate you for ruining the Avatar’s first love. So you don’t. You don’t say anything at all. You want to keep everyone happy.”

He lets one tear fall. It runs down his right cheek and sears his skin. And then a stream of them follow. He squeezes his eyes shut, fighting off the pain from her words that have stabbed his heart.

She shakes her head, “But you’re not happy. I’m not happy.”

“It’s too late for us, Katara.”

“How can you give up so easily?”

Anger bubbles up her throat, she is biting back phrases that Zuko thinks are meant to pierce his thick skull and drive into his mind forever. Every moment that passes, she searches for the right thing to say, stops, swallows back more tears, grimaces, and gets more upset.

He thinks this is good. Now that everything has been poured into the open, it is better for her to hate him. She should not be plagued by ‘what if’s’ when she leaves here. She should be mad, so mad in fact that she never wants to see him again. So that when she leaves, it is permanent. It would be difficult for him, it would break his soul apart, but it would make everything else easier.

“Because I’m happy. I don’t feel that way anymore.”

“Liar.”

Ah yes, _perceptive_. He forgot to add that to the list of her many traits. Or perhaps she just knows him too well.

The anger in her chest sizzles away when she searches his face. He is so broken. She hates that she’s done this to him. She knows she looks no different: miserable and hopeless and weak. Her eyes trail his face, his skin is flushed and drowning in tears. His eyes burn into her vision.

Even as they stand here in the stifling heat of the summer, clothed in layers of fine silk and jewelry, she misses his touch. She misses his embrace, his calloused but comforting hands, and his burnt but soft scar. If she had known she would never feel him again, she would have stayed a little longer in his arms, held onto his hand for a minute more, stroked the evidence of his pain no matter who saw.

“Did she make you happy?”

She has to know.

“Did he?”

He already knows.

Katara wants to laugh, because the universe certainly is. Everything that governs their lives has spent the past eleven years toying with their hearts. All the powers in the world worked against them. They brought them together to tear them apart but waited just long enough in between to make it hurt that much worse. It is sick and twisted. And she hates that she played into their game.

“Fire Lord Zuko?”

Katara bends the water off their faces and flicks it off the balcony railing. The drops glisten when moonlight hits them in the air before they find their place in the turtleduck pond.

“Your presence is required for the closing ceremony.”

“I will be there immediately.”

The footsteps recede back into the hall of fake smiles and drunken flirting. There reside the lives Katara and Zuko want to escape, but have to accept for the sake of the world.

And in this moment when everything is about to slip away, Katara doesn’t care anymore.

She throws her arms around his neck and hugs him. Just like she did before, but much tighter. And he holds her just as delicately as before, but much more desperately.

“Promise me.”

“What?”

“The next time—”

“Katara, we can’t—”

“The next life,” she says quickly.

His hands fist the fabric of her dress and he buries his head in her neck.

“We’ll try again. And we won’t run away. And it’ll be perfect. Promise me.”

He drowns himself in the feeling of her, because he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know if their souls will ever meet again. He doesn’t know if they can live out the love they always wanted. He doesn’t know anything at all, and it terrifies him.

“Zuko, promise me.”

“I promise,” because he wants so badly to believe it too.

**Author's Note:**

> apologies for the sadness, this work is part of a series and plays into a bigger story (one with a more satisfying ending hehe )
> 
> thank you so much for reading and please let me know your thoughts in the comments!!


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